


perennial

by UchiHime



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Hanahaki Disease, Illnesses, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Unrequited Love, no one dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 04:32:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13023300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UchiHime/pseuds/UchiHime
Summary: He’s going to cough up wolfsbane until his chest explodes from the pressure of the petals, until he’s choking on the stems, until the poison seeps into his blood, until his heart can’t beat around the roots. And he's going to die.Derek is going to die because that is the better option to forgetting Stiles.





	perennial

Derek is going to die.

His imminent demise is heralded by a tickle in his lungs, that turns into a series of loud coughs, that results in single purple flower petal slipping pass his lips and falling gracefully to the floor.

There’s the tiniest speck of blood on the flower petal, so tiny that Derek is sure the coppery taste in his mouth is completely imaginary. 

He recognizes the flower petal for what it is, every young wolf is taught to know it by sight and scent in all it's variations. And he knows without a doubt how it came to be in his mouth. Derek doesn’t know if he wants more to laugh or cry. 

He has goddamned wolfsbane growing in his lungs.

Well, obviously it had to be wolfsbane, no other flower could do the job. Hanahaki disease was meant to be deadly after all.

It takes a moment for Derek to remember all he knows about the disease. The first documented case was in Japan a hundred or so years ago. It spread rapidly across Asia from there. It’s not very common in western countries and is even less common among werewolves. He’d learned about it briefly in middle school and there was a million movies that romanticized it.

Hanahaki Disease, also called the flower sickness and the confession disease, is an illness born from one-sided love. It caused flowers to grow in the victim’s chest, resulting in the coughing up or vomiting of flower petals (and later full blooms as the disease progresses). Hanahaki becomes deadly when the roots of the internal flowers reaches the heart and strangles the organ and/or when they fully extend in the lungs, blocking all airways.

There are two known cures to hanahaki disease. One: confessing and having the one-sided love reciprocated. It’s the unrequited love disease after all. Myth said it was a punishment from some long forgotten god that was bitter about a human denying their feelings for them, and thus they made it so that all humans had to speak the truth about their love or die, or some such nonsense. 

Apparently, just confessing used to enough, but the disease a mutated over time making reciprocation mandatory for the cure now. In situations where the love is not requited, the disease becomes more aggressive and kills its host within twenty-four hours.

The second cure is a surgery that removes the flowers from the victim’s chest. But, doing this also removes all feelings towards (and sometimes all memories of) the person who triggered the disease in the first place. In Derek’s case, it would Stiles.

To cure himself, Derek would have to forget all he loved about Stiles. He’d have to forget how brave and caring and selfless and sarcastic and funny and smart and loyal and stubborn Stiles could be. He’d have to forget the curve of his lips and the color of his eyes and the length of his eyelashes and the feel of his fingers and the sound of his voice. He would have to forget Star Wars references and plaid shirts and the sound of a busted old Jeep driving up the street. He’d have to forget witty comments and false bravado and being saved again and again. He’d have to forget his own heart.

Derek is going to die because that is the better option to forgetting Stiles. There’s no way he could be left with any memories of Stiles without somehow falling in love with the boy all over again, just as there’s no way Stile could ever love him back. 

Because what is there about Derek worth loving? He destroys everything he touches. Kills everyone he loves. It’s like he’s a curse. And he refuses to bring the curse upon Stiles.

So, Derek is going to die. Simple as that. He’s going to cough up wolfsbane until his chest explodes from the pressure of the petals, until he’s choking on the stems, until the poison seeps into his blood, until his heart can’t beat around the roots. And he’s going to die still loving Stiles, and it's going to have been worth every second of the pain.

He’s already lost so much love in his life, he’ll be damned if he loses Stiles too. So he’s going to greet death with a mouthful of purple petals that can’t quite muffle the sound of Stiles’ name on his lips. Stiles is worth dying for.

* * *

 

He manages to hide it for two whole weeks. Sequestering himself in his apartment and refusing to leave unless it was absolutely necessary. At first, he answers his phone enough to avoid suspicion, but by the second week the flowers in his chest had grown so much that just breathing becomes a chore and he can’t barely go a couple minutes at a time without coughing. So even answering his phone carries too much of a risk of someone finding out.

He’s gone pass hacking up petals to vomiting full flowers. The illness is progressing so fast, Derek's not sure how much time he has left.

“You damn fool,” Stiles yells and Derek hadn’t even noticed him letting himself into his apartment. Derek has vague recollection of his phone ringing more than once without him answering it, but the aconite toxin is clouding his thoughts and Derek isn’t even sure what day it is anymore. “That had better not be what I think it is.”

Before Derek can respond, he starts coughing again, so hard he drops to his hands and knees before he realizes it. A ball of purple flowers spill from his mouth onto the floor, all of them stained red with blood, but he’d lost the ability to taste days ago.

The wolfsbane is making it hard for him to control his shift, and his eyes flash without his consent while his claws carve into the floor.

“It’s nothing,” Derek says with one hand held over his mouth while he tries to stifle more coughs. It’s an obvious lie, but he doesn’t want to alarm Stiles.

“That is not nothing,” Stiles yells, pointing an accusatory finger at the flowers that seem so bright against the dark stained wood of the floor. “That’s fucking hanahaki.”

There’s a sour feeling in Derek’s stomach that he knows is not from the poisonous plants growing behind his rib cage. Why did Stiles have to be here now? Derek doesn’t want Stiles to see him like this, can’t bear the thought of him having to watch as Derek wastes away.

“It’s nothing,” Derek repeats as if that would make it true, as if lying would change what Stiles is seeing with his own eyes.

“Who is it?” Stiles demands to know.

“It’s no one. This is nothing.” His tone is almost pleading. Why did it have to be Stiles? Why did it have to be him to barge in and find him like this? Why not someone else, anyone else? Someone who would listen when he tried to explain why things had to be this way. 

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Stop with the bullshit already. We both know what that is and what it means, and there’s only one way I’ll allow this to end, that’s with you alive with that shit out of your chest. I don’t care if I have to pin you down and pour fucking weedkiller down your throat, I am not letting this thing kill you.”

What Derek heard was  _I’m not losing you_ and it makes him want to cry.

“Just let it go, Stiles.”

“Like hell I will. Just tell me who it is. I’ll drag their asses here kicking and screaming if I have to, so you can confess your feelings.”

“It won’t matter if they don’t love me back. It would just kill me faster.”

There’s something unfathomably sad in Stiles’ brown eyes as he says, “Anyone would have to be a fool not to love you once they know you.”

Derek’s heart is beating too fast in his chest, while at the same time not beating enough. It feels like there’s a fist wrapped around it and it’s fighting to keep pumping but it’s too much of a struggle. His lungs are aching for air now.

“Derek!” Stiles calls when he Derek starts gasping and wheezing a choking. He falls to his knees next to Derek a cups his face, expression frantic. “Derek, breathe! Please Derek, breathe. Don’t die on me. Don’t you fucking dare die on me.”

Stiles’ arms wrap around Derek’s shoulders and pull him close as he rambles on. “You can’t die, Derek. You can’t. If you die, I’ll die to. Do you want that on your conscience? Do you want to die knowing you killed me? Because I have hanahaki, too, and you’re the reason. And if you die before hearing how much I love you, we’re going to be buried side by side.”

As Stiles’ words penetrate his clouded mind, breathing suddenly becomes a lot easier. Derek takes in a ragged breath as if surfacing from being underwater too long. He yanks himself out of Stiles’ arms and doubles over to puke up another mouthful of bloody wolfsbane.

“Derek?” Stiles says, almost hesitantly. He reaches out a touches Derek on the shoulders and Stiles words to him finally orders themselves in his head enough to make some kind of sense.

“You have hanahaki, too?” Derek asks, voice raw as if he’s been swallowing razor blades.

“Yes,” Stiles says softly.

“For me? You have hanahaki for me?”

“Yes,” Stiles repeats. Derek’s listening as hard as he can to Stiles’s heartbeat, but he can’t detect any lies.

Derek looks at Stiles, utter disbelief showing on his face. “You love me?”

“Yes,” Stiles says one last time. “That’s why I came here. I started coughing petals yesterday and I knew right away that I had to tell you. I wasn’t sure if you’d love me back, but I knew I couldn’t keep it hidden. I didn’t expect you to be sick, too, though. But I guess I have my answer though. You’re already in love with someone else.”

Stiles sounded so heartbroken, Derek found himself yelling before he realized. “No! No, Stiles, not someone else. You. I’m in love with you. This,” he gestured to the mess of bloody flowers on the floor, “this is for you.”

“Me?” Stiles, asks, voice heavy with disbelief.

“Yes, Stiles, you.” Derek assures him.

Stiles just stares at him in silent shock for a long moment, before suddenly out of nowhere, punch Derek in the chest with all his strength. “You goddamn idiot! You were going to let it kill you. You were about to die. I was going to have to stand here and watch you die, because why? What the fuck, Derek!”

Derek flushed and rubbed at his chest, Stiles punch hurting his already weakened body more than he’d expected. “I didn’t think there was any way you could possibly love me back.”

Stiles stared at him as if he was speaking another language. “You goddamn idiot. Derek Hale, the entire fucking town knows I’m in love with you. Every deputy and teacher, drag queen and whore, knows I’m in love with you. I haven’t exactly been subtle about it. I’ve done everything short of hiring a billboard off the freeway to print my declaration of intent. How the hell did you not notice?”

Derek can only blink in disbelief. “You’re serious?”

“Serious as the wolfsbane in your lungs. You know, I was thinking it made no sense for me to suddenly develop hanahaki. I mean, I thought you already knew how I felt, so why would I get the confession disease? When I got here and saw you sick, I figured its because you love someone else and I’m suffering one-sided love. But nope. It’s because I’m in love with an idiot.”

Derek lets out a long sigh, inwardly marveling at how easy it is breathe now. Having confessed his love and having the feelings returned, the plants in his chest had already started to break themselves down at a rapid pace, and he would shit the last traces of it out by this time tomorrow.

Stiles is still ranting as Derek gets to his feet and head towards the bathroom to brush his teeth and maybe take a shower. The idiot  _he’s_  in love with will still be there when he got out.

**Author's Note:**

> someone please teach me how to write endings


End file.
